“Ah, he bowed so beautifully, did he not, Robin? Still, the lady will not smile. She will not even look his way.”
“Which lady is that, Julian?” Lord Robert asked. He was apparently the only person in the theatre who had not observed Society’s latest sensation.
“It does not signify. It is certainly not worth interrupting your conversation with your beautiful friend.” The marquess dropped carelessly into his seat.
“It is the widow, mon cheri,” Elise confided. “I have the suspicion your cousin takes a fancy to Madame Davenant.”
“Madame who?”
Elise touched a finger to Lord Robert’s lips. The music had recommenced.
Lord Brandon joined the couple for a late supper at the Piazza. As he’d predicted, word of the widow’s snub had sped through the audience—thanks no doubt to the kind offices of Silence Jersey.
“She cut you, Julian?” Robert asked, aghast. “But no one has ever done that. No one would dare. Who the devil does she think she is?”
“She is the Widow Davenant,” said his mistress. “Half the ladies are afraid of her, and all the gentlemen. She is a paragon. Everyone in the ton is naughty sometimes, no? But they are discreet, and so everyone knows, perhaps, yet they make believe they are all virtue. But Madame is all virtue. She has never stepped wrong, even the little step.”
“Gad, she sounds awful. I must say, Julian, when Elise pointed her out, you could have knocked me over with a feather. She’s not at all in your style.”
Lord Brandon slowly turned his wineglass, apparently studying its colour with great care. “Thank you for calling that to my attention, cousin,” he said. “I was ill, you know. Evidently my vision suffered. My short-sightedness has been mentioned before.”
Elise shrugged. “She is very handsome, I think. Not a great beauty, but very fine. It is her air, perhaps.”
Something flickered in the green eyes. It was quickly hooded, but perhaps not quickly enough, for Elise continued, “She is strong and proud. I think she has great will. It is not easy for a widow—for any woman alone—even in the Beau Monde. Or perhaps it is more difficult there. Still, one hears never a whisper of scandal about her. She presents her nieces, and always they marry well.”
“You seem to know a great deal about this lady,” said the marquess.
“Ah, je sais tout. It amuses me. The shopgirls are always so willing to repeat what they hear. Everyone wonders about Madame, because she is a mystery. She has no intimate friends. Her companion knows as little what is in the widow’s heart as do the horses of the fine carriage that brought us here.”
By this time, Robert had had quite enough of the widow. He had much rather hear of doings in France and wherever else Julian had been.
Obligingly the marquess turned to Talleyrand and Castlereagh and Metternich and Czar Alexander and the rest. His anecdotes were, as one would expect, wickedly amusing. If the telling bored him even more than usual and his mind wandered elsewhere more than once, one of his listeners at least did not remark it.
The following Monday, Cecily’s aunt accompanied her to the dressmaker’s. As usual, Lilith’s in-laws’ notions of a proper Season’s wardrobe had been sadly inadequate. Since this was usual, she was not taken unawares. She had carefully hoarded a sum for this express purpose. She would have probably done so in any case: treating her nieces to clothes and trinkets was one of her special pleasures.
She entered the shop... and stopped short, her pleasure abruptly extinguished.
Lounging in a chair, idly turning the pages of a fashion journal, was the Marquess of Brandon. He glanced up at their entrance, and his bored green eyes lit with amusement. Lazily he rose and made the ladies an extravagant bow.
Her lips compressed in a tight line, Lilith took her niece’s arm and swept coldly past him, on to the dressing-room door. At that instant, the door flew open, narrowly missing Cecily, and a woman sailed heedlessly through. Lilith stepped hastily out of the way and stumbled against her niece. The woman made no apology, but headed straight for Lord Brandon. She was the one who’d been in his box the previous evening.
“Ah, pauvre home,” she cried. “Were you horribly bored, waiting?”
“Unspeakably so,” he answered. “That is, until the very last.”
Lilith hustled Cecily into the dressing room.
“I do not understand,” the niece said. “Is it not impolite to ignore an acquaintance?”
“He is not an acquaintance,” was the low answer. “We have not been properly introduced.”
“But at the inn—”
Lilith turned to the eagerly listening modiste and asked for a moment’s privacy. Reluctantly, Madame Suzette exited the room.
In still lower tones, the aunt explained that it was her Christian duty to help a fellow human being in trouble. Having fulfilled her duty, she was no longer under any obligation to converse with or even acknowledge Lord Brandon. Even if she were inclined—which she certainly was not—she would never do so without a formal introduction. “A lady,” she pointed out, “does not respond to every person who seeks her attention.”
Elise Fourgette was not only clever, but possessed of virtually infallible instincts. Though she teased Lord Brandon about the widow as soon as they were in his carriage, Elise knew this was merely a prelude.
The marquess had come to London with a purpose. All of Robert’s relatives, it seemed, had come on the same business. This time, however, her adversary was more than worthy of her mettle. Even without hearing of his reputation, Elise would have sensed immediately that Lord Brandon was a force to be reckoned with.
He spent ten minutes fencing lightly with her about Mrs. Davenant. Then the duel began in earnest, and, figuratively speaking, the sword was at Elise’s throat before she had time to say, “En garde.’’
“You have some letters in your possession,” he said in deceptively easy tones. “I should like to have them.”
“Ah, milord, that is what everyone would like, I think.”
“But I am not everyone, mademoiselle.” His voice was soft. His green eyes were pitiless. “You may give them up to me voluntarily today—or another day, quite soon, I promise, involuntarily. You see, the matter is excessively tiresome, and I should like to have done with it as quickly as possible. I hope you are not in a dilatory frame of mind. In that case, I should be obliged to ask certain more efficient persons to see to it.”
His smile was utterly devastating. Were not for his eyes, one would think he offered her carte blanche.
“That would be tedious and inconvenient for both of us, I believe,” he added. “They are such uncomfortable fellows to have about.”
Brandon, it was said, always got what he wanted, by fair means or foul. Since he was reputed to prefer the latter, Elise had no doubt his threat was genuine. Such persons as he spoke of existed, and he would not shrink at employing them. How she hated him at this moment, this devilishly handsome, rich and powerful English lord.
“Je comprend,” she said tightly. Then she set her brain to work.
No more was said until they reached the cramped lodgings Robert shared with his mistress. The younger man was still out, Lord Brandon having had the foresight to dispatch his cousin on an exceedingly time-consuming errand.
The marquess accepted the glass of wine Elise offered him, and leaned back, perfectly at ease, in his chair.
“I do not have all the letters with me,” she said in French. “I can give you only some half-dozen this day.”
He answered flawlessly in the same language. He had rather not be overheard by prying landladies.
“I did not suppose you were so careless as to keep them all in one place. Nor do I suppose,” he added lightly as he turned the goblet in his hands, “you will be so impractical as to release them all. No one knows how many there are—least of all Robert.”
“I am not so reckless of my health as to deceive you, milord.”
“All the same, I shall not put temptation in you
r way. In addition to giving me Robert’s letters, you will write one of your own to him. In it you will firmly and irrevocably, now and for all time, decline to be his wife.”
Elise’s dark eyes flashed. “That I will not do,” she said quietly. “If you wish such a thing, you must hire assassins as well.”
Lord Brandon covered a yawn. “I see you mean to be tiresome, after all. You are under some misapprehension that I cannot persuade you to write this letter. Let me assure you, dear lady, I can.”
She laughed. “You will torture me, I suppose? I had not thought you so foolish. I have never told Robert how his relations bully and threaten me. He is so protective—and impetuous, you know. He would insist we be married at once.”
“That is hardly to your advantage. His family will cut him off without a penny.”
“We shall make do for a few months, I think. In July he is five and twenty, and no longer depends upon their charity.”
“Yet you will always be outcasts. You will always be pinched for funds. His income is scarcely what a woman of your talents merits.”
She smiled at him over the rim of her wineglass. “There is some compensation in wedding a nobleman. My mother is a whore, my father most likely a sailor. Mama never catered to the aristocracy, you see. How amazed she will be at my title! Perhaps she will come to live with us.”
“I hope you have not built too many castles in the air, mademoiselle,” he drawled, though it cost him something to suppress his revulsion at the prospect she painted for him. “Rest assured you will never marry my cousin. Or, in the unlikely event you do, please be quite certain the marriage will be dissolved—one way or another.”